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One of the authors runs an annual “Rube Goldberg*” design project as the culminating student demonstration of a junior level electrical laboratory class. Over the past 30 years attendance has grown from a few students the first year to now include city-wide attendance and television coverage from multiple stations. The term “Rube Goldberg” originates from Reuben Lucius Goldberg’s cartoons portraying complex solutions to simple problems, and engineers sometimes use the term as a derogatory description for an unnecessarily complex system. The “Rube Goldberg” student project assignment includes: “This is a project, proposed, designed, and built by yourself, to demonstrate your creativity. Use of conversion from electronic signals to physical motion is encouraged. An electric motor should be used somewhere in the project. A good example of what is being sought is the ‘Mousetrap Game.’” Many students see this preparation and demonstration as the epitome of their engineering education. They catch an excitement far out of proportion to the slight grade they get as a reward, and are motivated instead in proportion to the large amount of learning they accomplish. Camaraderie is generated, and the night before the public presentation a large number of students spend all night in the lab adding last-minute details, drinking energy beverages, and eating pizza. The comment “if Professor Graff doesn’t teach Lab 3 [with Rube Goldberg] anymore, there’s no reason to come to [this] University” has been overheard on campus. The open-ended Rube Goldberg design project has six very intentional learning goals. These goals include providing students with hands-on experience with: (1) teamwork, (2) public presentation, (3) creativity & innovation, (4) systems thinking, (5) energy transfer and conversions, (6) Murphy’s Law (if anything can go wrong, it probably will), and (7) learning from failures. The effect on student learning has been phenomenal, demonstrated in part by qualitative assessments such as conversations with alumni. Many teaching principles have been gleaned, such as “Learning by Failure”, “Last-Minute-Engineering”, “The Stupidity of Not Planning Ahead”, “The Importance of Duct Tape”, and “How to Explain Technical Principles to a Diverse Audience.” Each successive year the University has seen fit to ban more energy transitions, for safety’s sake, so that the students find it necessary to find innovative ways to produce shock and awe in future presentations.

Thirty Years of Rube Goldberg Projects: A Student-Driven Learning Laboratory for Innovation